The Ruling Mask

by Neil McGarry

  Stavros gasped and looked up at her in wonder. “You knew what it was, before you turned it over.” She nodded but took no pleasure in his awe. “What is this one called?”

  “Stagnation.” Jana had named it order when she had drawn this card, but Duchess’ word seemed the more right. “It is the limit we all reach, the boundary lines drawn by certainty.” She thought of Jadis and Malachar, of Amabilis and Adam Whitehall. “For if all is predestined, what does anything matter?” She felt as if the words were coming not from her but through her, for Jana had never spoken so.

  She reached for the next card. “Here is what blocks your way.” On its reverse was the same strange image of the group of women who were all the same person, all approaching the same stone from different angles. The stone stood above her, fell towards her, crushed her, but then she was out from under, turning back onto her own path until she returned to the beginning. Wisdom, Jana had said. “Paralysis,” Duchess muttered.

  Stavros’ brow furrowed over watery, red-rimmed eyes. “How is that different?” he asked.

  She thought of the facets. “To know everything is to know nothing, if one cannot choose. If one cannot change.”

  Stavros shook his head, his eyes half-open. “What...what is the last?” he slurred.

  She was surprised how hard it was to turn over the last card, even knowing what it was. “What lies before you,” she whispered. The curve of the Ouroboros, the gray tatters of Philemon’s robe, then finally the Ruling Mask. She held up the card before Stavros’ eyes. Through its thickness the lamplight picked out the unpainted surface of the Mask and it was as if it were looking back at her. “Do you see it, my lord? Do you see?”

  “The Mask,” Stavros said in dull surprise. “Our Mask...my family...” His eyes fluttered and then slid closed, and he slumped sideways in his chair. His breathing became long and deep.

  She sat there for what seemed an eternity, the hollowed eyes of the Ruling Mask boring into her own, the card in her hand no protection at all.

  * * *

  As quietly as she could but as quickly as she dared, she slipped through the corridors of Banncroft, made as familiar as the streets of the Shallows by repetition and rote. Isabelle’s sketches had been her constant companion the past few days, and between them and Fiona’s advice, she had every step of her movement through the manse planned to a nicety. “Stay as far away as you can from the servant’s halls,” Fiona had told her at their last meeting. “The butler’s stairs may be the most direct path to the upper floors, but they’re also the place you’re most likely to run into someone. With the family gone for the evening, the help may think to use the main corridors, but it strikes me as unlikely.”

  Like Iris, Fiona seemed to know her business. She’d yet to run into a single servant as she made her careful way to the portrait hall. Then, just as she turned the final corner, she heard the close sound of panting. She closed her eyes tightly. Either her desperate improvisation would succeed, or it would not.

  She had watched Stavros Davari sleeping for what seemed a very long time, wracking her brain. She’d risked so much and come so far, and she knew, somehow, that she would find a way to evade the defenses of House Davari. She’d outwitted barons and Brutes and blackarms; surely she could do the same with a few guard dogs. But of course her previous opponents had been human, and therefore susceptible to deception. They could be cozened into ignoring their instincts, but in this case her adversaries would quite literally follow their noses—

  And that, of course, was the answer.

  She walked around the corner as if Banncroft were her right and proper home. There, sniffing at the base of a pedestal supporting the bust of an ancient dead Davari, stood one of Gregor’s beasts. It raised its head at her appearance and sniffed the air, and then on padded feet it ambled towards her.

  Duchess held her breath but kept on walking, slowly closing the distance between her and the thing. We believe what we wish to believe. She hoped it as true of dogs as it was of people. Carefully, she drew her bandaged hands into the doublet’s too-large arms and let the dog approach.

  She knew she looked ridiculous. If she’d been discovered by a guard or a servant there would be no way to explain why she was outside the library, much less dressed as she was. The dogs, however, would be less discerning. It was her smell that concerned them.

  The dog drew alongside her, nipping at the frilled ruffles of the doublet’s arms. She let it, praying to every god of the Walk that Stavros’ scent was stronger than her own. She’d left the boy in nothing but his smallclothes and a thin white tunic, lying unconscious in the library. She’d carefully put on his doublet over her bandages and rolled up her skirts as high as she could, tucking them into the over-baggy breeches; even the youngest Davari was considerably larger than she.

  She held her breath as the dog drew closer, ears and tail straight up. If this went awry, she’d have nothing but a bloody stump of the hand she hid in the sleeve.

  The beast nuzzled closer, sniffing suspiciously at the fabric of the breeches, and she bit her lip until she could taste blood. She kept as still as she could as it lifted its head to regard her with its brown eyes. A growl began deep in its throat, but it did not bare its teeth. Something was wrong, but not enough to simply attack her.

  Taking a deep breath, she slowly moved her hand within the sleeve, bringing it down upon the thing’s head, petting it gently.

  The growl deepened for a moment and she was certain she’d done the wrong thing. Still, she stroked the creature between its ears, which slowly lowered. The growl that had been so steadily growing, slowed, then stopped. After what seemed an eternity, the dog backed away and yawned. Then it trotted off the way it had come as if nothing at all had happened.

  She sagged against the pedestal, looking into the marble white of the dead Davari’s eyes. She shivered, simultaneously sweating and too cold all at once. That had been entirely too close. Still, there was no time, not even to soothe her jangled nerves. Gods only knew when a servant or a guard might check in on Lord Stavros.

  She blessed Iris for ordering the lamps re-lit before the family headed out for the evening. Without them, she’d have been stumbling blind through the corridors. Still, they were widely enough spaced to give her shadows to hide in when she heard the occasional footsteps of a servant, or a guard on patrol.

  Halfway down the portrait hall, she found what she was looking for.

  “There’s a small space behind the painting of Myrian Davari,” Iris had told her during their last meeting. “I used to imagine it was a secret panel, but really it's just a niche that someone hung the picture over and then forgot. When I was a girl, I would hide things there, things I didn’t want anyone else to find: love letters, coins, bits of ribbon. It’s not precisely a secret—I’m certain Fiona knows of it—but your tools should be safe there for a day.”

  Myrian had been a dead-eyed man with a ring of hair around a bald pate, it seemed, and whomever had painted his portrait had not attempted to improve his looks. She carefully lifted up the bottom of the work, feeling behind it with her free hand. Sure enough, her fingers touched the cloth-wrapped bundle of picks and wires she’d safeguarded with Iris. Further confirmation that both Iris and Fiona had done as they’d promised, she reasoned as she slipped out the hall and up the stairs. It was Isabelle who’d lost her nerve.

  On the second floor she paused to get her bearings. If Fiona’s directions were right, Lord Venn’s quarters were beyond the pillared gallery above the main hall, which matched Isabelle’s rough sketches. Duchess shook her head at it. Why go through the bother of a partial betrayal? Had Gregor’s response somehow frightened her? Had Martin suspected enough to prevent Isabelle from accessing the dogs?

  It hardly mattered—Duchess had already made up her mind as to who would be the Mask’s final owner.

  Venn’s chambers were not locked, and she quickly stepped inside, pulling the door closed behind her. The circular room in which she s
tood was magnificent, dimly lit by scented candles of gold and black. An enormous canopied bed that would have dominated any lesser room stood to her right, lost in the enormity of the chamber. Beyond stood a writing desk, a few chairs, a plump couch, and a hulking armoire. Above shone a high domed ceiling set with panes of clear glass showing only the blackness of night. Her entire apartment could easily fit into this space, with room for Lysander’s garret and half of the Vermillion besides. Such grandeur made even the Eusbius estate pale in comparison. She shook her head, half in wonder, half to clear it for the task at hand.

  The door to the vault was concealed by fine-woven draperies, and when she whisked aside the blue silk, she was relieved to see a keyhole and not a puzzle lock. All three sisters had mentioned this, but still, she’d worried. It made a kind of sense; in a house of full of vipers, an object like a key was easier to control than the knowledge of how to open a puzzle lock. She brought one of the candles closer, knelt, then took out her tools and set to work.

  Tyford had warned her that any lock could be trouble, so she resisted the urge to be careless. The inner mechanisms were well tended but the pins were heavier than she expected, for when she tried to move them, her most delicate pick snapped almost in half. The most delicate and the most expensive, she noted sourly as she set aside the mangled piece of metal and drew out another. This time she probed more carefully, trying to determine the resistance of each pin by touch alone. When she finally had a feel for the lock she inserted a second tool and carefully began to lift the pins.

  She lost track of time, but after what felt like an eternity she moved the last pin and twisted, and the lock yielded with a satisfying click. She smiled grimly and slid the tools back into her pocket, thinking she might have to send Tyford a bottle of wine. Anonymously, of course, considering how their partnership had ended. She left the broken pick where she’d set it down; come morning, it would serve as evidence that the theft had occurred while the Davari sisters were elsewhere. She carefully swung open the heavy door.

  The vault itself was small, no more than five feet on a side, and if she had expected to find chests of coins and baskets of gems she could not have been more wrong. Nobles like the Davari kept the majority of their wealth in the bank and not lying about where anyone could steal it. What she did find, however, was worth more than every account in the Old Empire Countinghouse. On a waist-high plinth, in a wooden cradle cushioned with velvet, sat the Ruling Mask.

  She held her breath for a long moment. It was precisely the same in shape and form as the mask that had peeked out from beneath the gray tatters of her dreams. Its surface held the same curve and sheen as the one in Philemon’s painting. Its color was the same pallid yellow as that of the card Ouroboros. The duplicate she’d seen had been a fine copy, the silver lines above and below the eyes capturing the same shimmer of the original.

  All of her plans regarding the Davari, Attys, and Far hinged on this moment. The certainty of her beliefs was about to be tested. Either she had guessed right and she was not affected by the relics and magics Philemon’s people had left scattered across the land, or she was very, very wrong. The answer would be the difference between victory and the loss of one of her hands.

  She bit her lip, let out a long, ragged breath, and reached out with her left hand.

  Her extended fingers brushed lightly over the smooth surface of the Mask. And nothing happened.

  She almost cried with joy, thanking every god she could think of. She risked another touch, feeling the cold surface of the Davari’s treasure under her hand. Again she felt nothing. Nothing strange at all. Grinning, she snatched the Mask from its cradle and set about sealing up the vault. So strange, to feel nothing at all after so much work and worry.

  She stopped in her tracks. She took up the Mask in both hands and knelt beside the candle she’d placed on the ground. She ran her fingers over its surface, placed her palms against its back. Nothing. She gently stroked the silver lines. For a mad moment she thought of simply placing the damned thing on her face.

  There’d been nothing. Nothing when she entered the chamber, nothing when she’d touched it. Worse, the thing was cold. She held the surface of it between her palms. Cold, and rough. She thought of Jana’s cards sliding her in hands like living things. She thought of Stavros Davari’s wonder as he held them. They feel almost...familiar.

  She thought of the pallid yellow of Ouroboros, the whole card painted except for the mask. Why bother painting it, when it was already the right color?

  She flipped the Mask over in her hands and dared to scratch a fingernail along its pale yellow back. As she did, a sliver of color came off in her hand, revealing a muted brown beneath. The damned thing was made of wood.

  “Oh gods,” she muttered. “It’s a fake.”

  But why would Venn lock up such a thing? Why bother with such a deception? And where was the real one? Where in all of Banncroft was more secure than the lord’s vault?

  And then she knew.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Unmasked

  She encountered nothing on her way downstairs—no dogs, no servants—for which she was profoundly grateful. She’d already spent far too much time in this dangerous place. She had only been there once before, but she remembered the way and soon enough she stood in the large pillared hall where Martin Davari’s art collection was displayed beneath an arched ceiling frescoed with forests and flower gardens. That night the entire manse had been filled with partygoers, but tonight the place was as quiet as a tomb.

  She’d felt the Mask, of course, the night of the party, when she'd leaned forward to inspect it. Everyone had marveled at the perfection of the replica, and so she’d thought her strange vertigo simply a trick of the mind, her own fear made manifest.

  Now she knew better.

  She should have seen it earlier. Martin Davari ruled his lord brother because Martin himself held the Mask. And like Uncle Cornelius with her father’s diaries, he had not protected it by locking it away in a vault or surrounding it with traps, but by leaving it in plain sight. A clever move; after all, the other Davari would never dream that such a relic would be so accessibly placed, and anyone else who might be interested—well, there was that curse.

  The so-called replica was precisely where she’d remembered, still safely ensconced in its locked cask. Even through the glass, the chill of the thing was palpable, and for a moment she almost saw mist surrounding it. She took a deep breath to get hold of herself and started on the lock. She whispered a prayer of thanks that it was a simple mechanism compared to what she’d faced in the vault, but the strangeness emanating from the cask made the job more difficult, the pricking of her thumbs almost causing her to break another pick. Finally, the lock gave against her tense efforts and clicked open.

  Sweating, she folded back the lid. The cold grew more intense and the floor seemed to spin beneath her. She did not so much reach for the Mask as fall towards it, down suddenly taking on a different meaning and direction. The beats of her heart stretched and lengthened as time twisted on itself. Even through the long, strange fall, some small part of her rejoiced in the madness of it, for it could only mean she had been right.

  And then her right hand closed upon the Ruling Mask.

  Energy seemed to jolt through her fingers, up her arm, and across her entire body. Her muscles spasmed all at once, and her teeth clicked down so quickly that she almost bit her tongue. Her lungs hitched and she found that she could not breathe. Pressure bulged inside her skull, as if her eyes might suddenly pop out, and she had the terrifying sensation of something ripping through her, searching, seeking...

  ...and then it was gone and she was gasping, alone and unhurt, in the empty hall, the Mask in her still-whole right hand.

  She ran a trembling hand across her face, gasping for air. The curse was real and it was deadly, yet her wild hunch had borne out. Whatever chaos she had brought into the order of the Halls of Dawn, whatever blind spot she formed in the vision of the facets, wha
tever hid her heart from Jadis and Morel had also protected her from the Mask. Was this why Philemon was so interested in her? The Mask had been his, once, when he was still alive—was there some connection between it and what he had become? Cecilia had told her that Domae mythology spoke of revenants, ghosts of vengeance. What revenge could the last emperor possibly seek upon her or her brother, her sister, her father? Her own people had been a pack of quarreling savages when the Grey Emperors still ruled Old Domani.

  With an effort she pushed such questions from her mind. There was still work to do and other mysteries that needed unraveling. She placed the false Mask into the case and locked it. With luck, Martin Davari would not notice the theft until it was too late.

  She made her way to the northern tower, passing the garden where only weeks before Dorian Eusbius had dueled with Gregor Davari. Gregor was a monster but not a schemer, and Stavros by all accounts lacked the ambition to overthrow his own brother. It struck Duchess once more that the sisters were the most formidable of the Davari. She shook her head. Any of the sisters could have done something similar to what Duchess had done tonight, if she’d thought to trust one of the others long enough.

  She moved as quickly as she dared without compromising her stealth. Banncroft was an enormous place, but even at this hour she might run into a servant about some late-night duties, and then she’d be in for it. She found the door to the tower next to a burning brazier and slipped up the stairs into the first of many chambers that Fiona had described—the lady’s sitting room. Up and up she went, feeling as if time were running out. On the next level she found Fiona’s bedchamber, looking much like Isabelle’s, though decorated in brown and red instead of blue and white. On the floor above was a solar with chairs and a work table, upon which lay some needles and embroidery. Duchess shook her head—she could not imagine Fiona Davari at needlepoint.

  The final turn of the stairs led her to the attic, beneath the steepled roof of the tower. The room was a jumble of chests and casks and boxes, but what she sought stood just under the only window. She grinned; unlike Isabelle, Fiona had kept her word.